General: Meetings

So many times I have been in meetings where we talked and talked and at the end everyone left the room without any concrete result.
A meeting should NOT be bored. This will kill all the enthusiasm of all the participant.
But it should at least have some structure.
The meeting-invite and the meeting minutes will create some structure.

A meeting starts with an invite, containing a clear description of the goal, scope and agenda of the meeting.

Then the actual meeting starts:

• be on time!
• do not accept the meeting without showing up (personal reasons excluded)
  
• the facilitator will repeat the goal, scope and agenda of the meeting
• the facilitator or another participant will write meeting minutes
• items that someone want to discuss, that are NOT on the agenda; put them in a parking lot either to discuss if there is time left or put it on the agenda for next meeting
• do NOT go into to many details unless it is in scope
• 5 min before the end the facilitator will recap (discussed items, decisions and action items)

Types of meetings:

• Weekly status meetings > the goal of a weekly status meeting is that a team of group has a clear understanding of all the activities in the pipeline
• Project meetings > there are a variety of meeting within a project; from kick-off to brainstorm meetings
• 10-10 meetings > performance meeting between manager and employee

All of these meetings should follow the same structure.

Template(s):
Microsoft Meeting Minutes template
Google result on Meeting Minutes